Czech medical care no longer “free”
May 27th, 2008 | by Brian Schwartz |From Sunday’s New York Times:
In the Czech Republic, you can now see a doctor for about $1.85. A day in the hospital can verge on $4. This is not cause for celebration.
For Czechs, who visit their doctors more often than anyone else in Europe, it has led to great outrage. In fact, the idea of charging anything at all for health care can generate significant controversy, not to mention abrupt about-faces in policy, here and in other Central European countries. …
The fees here, $1.85 for a prescription as well as a doctor’s visit, and twice that for a day in the hospital, are clearly having an effect on Czech behavior. The Health Ministry said the number of prescriptions fell 40 percent in the first quarter, though some of that may have been a result of stockpiling at the end of last year. The government estimated that public insurers had saved more than $100 million in the first quarter compared with the previous year, while providers collected $62 million in fees.
This finding is consistent with part of the RAND Health Insurance Experiment :
Participants in cost sharing plans spent less on health care; this savings came from using fewer services rather than finding lower prices. Those with 25 percent coinsurance spent 20 percent less than participants with free care, and those with 95 percent coinsurance spent about 30 percent less.
As for quality of care, the RAND study found that:
cost sharing did not significantly affect the quality of care received by participants. … In general, the reduction in services induced by cost sharing had no adverse effect on participants’ health.
It would be interesting to see the effect of the new Czech policy on health outcomes.
More on this article here .
